Samsung HDDs reach 1TB per platter areal density

Samsung has announced a new breakthrough in HDD areal density, pushing up to one terabyte of data per platter in a new line of drives being shown off at this year's CeBIT convention in Hanover, Germany. The company demonstrated a 3.5-inch two-terabyte, two-platter model during the event that will launch as part of its Spinpoint EcoGreen series of drives featuring 5400RPM spindle speeds, 32MB of cache and SATA 6Gbps connectivity.

The achievement will eventually lead to lower cost, high-speed 3TB and 4TB models. But the bump in platter densities isn't just for desktop class drives, as Samsung is also showing 1TB 2.5-inch HDDs for laptops, which integrate two 500GB platters along a 8MB cache and 3Gbps SATA interface. The upshot is that this new drive will be standard-sized for compatibility with most laptops rather than 12.5mm tall as last year's model.

The 1TB notebook drive could debut as early as April, according to reports, while an estimated launch date or price for the newest member of Samsung's Spinpoint EcoGreen (5400 RPM) desktop series remains unknown.